… watching for the brushstrokes of God
The artist’s work is homeless in the deepest sense even though it is also real work alongside scholarship and church and state. Art does not come within the sphere of our work as creatures or our work as sinners saved by grace. As pure play it relates to redemption. Hence it is at root a non practical and lonely action. It belongs to the empty sphere of the uncontrollable future in the present. ~ Karl Barth
Where do you enter homeless play?
“Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” Isaiah 55:2
300 km of bike trails with 43 wind, water and horse mills make this region in Germany unique. The mills are in operation from April to October serving oven-warm butter cake to the creaking and rustling of the mill wings.
What makes your region unique?
“It is good to make an end of movement, to come to a point of rest, a place of pause. There is some strange magic in activity, in keeping at it, in continuing to be involved in many things that excite the mind and keep the hours swiftly passing. But it is a deadly magic; one is not wise to trust it with too much confidence. ~ Howard Thurman
What keeps you from making an end to movement?
On retreat last week, we watched three bald eagles with their amazing wingspan soaring, gliding and reigning supreme – a mother and her two young ones, their heads still brown.
Soaring like eagles
Gliding above earth and sky
Vision far beyond
How do you capture beauty?
“That is precisely the time when artists go to work — not when everything is fine, but in times of dread… We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.” ~ Toni Morrison
How do you participate?
Joy unspeakable
is not silent
it moans, hums, and bends
to the rhythm of a dancing universe.
It is a fractal of transcendent hope,
a hologram of God’s heart
a black hole of unknowing. ~ Barbara A. Holmes
What is joy unspeakable for you?
